“By Jove!” said Barry, staring; “it’s pretty awful to think of you having nothing to eat, Father.”
“Oh, I’m well fed,” said the doctor, lightly. “No need to worry about me. Now be off, you two—and remember, I won’t have an easy moment until I know how you have got on. For goodness’ sake, don’t lose the creek!” He smiled at them, letting his hand rest on his boy’s shoulder for a moment. Then he watched them as they hurried into the bush.
For a time the track was plain enough—steep and stony, with sudden drops that made them wonder sharply how men were going to carry a stretcher down it—but not densely overgrown. They were able to make good progress. Then they came to a place where a fallen tree had smashed across it, and it was quite difficult to find the path again in the mass of far-flung limbs; they hated the loss of time while they cast backwards and forwards. When, three or four hundred yards farther on, the track seemed to fork, Robin pulled up.
“I don’t like it, Barry,” she said. “There may have been stray cattle here, making a second trail, and how do we know where it may lead us? The creek is beastly to walk in, but at least it’s safe. I think we’d better get down to it.”
“Right-oh,” said Barry. “But can we?”
Robin put up her hand, listening.
“I think I hear it, don’t you?” She looked at the thick wall of scrub as one looks at an enemy. “Come on: I guess we can worm our way through.”
They wormed—if that term may be given to a struggle that left both breathless. Sometimes they tore aside stiff clumps of dogwood twined thickly with creeping plants: sometimes squeezed through the closely-growing hazel and blanket-wood, stepping downwards upon heaps of slender, long-fallen trunks, so rotten, under their covering of ferns, that at any moment a foot incautiously planted might sink down past the knee. They climbed over huge fallen trees, deep-brown with damp moss or slippery with wet—trunks on which it was no easy matter to get a footing; where, once gained, the slightest misstep might end in a long slither and a broken ankle. They could not see a yard ahead, in most places: only, when they paused a moment to wipe their dripping faces, the song of the creek could be heard, far below, but always coming a little nearer. Often it was easier to crawl beneath a dead giant than to climb over it, even if they had to dig a way through. Nettles, tall and venomous, stung their hands and faces: brambles and wild-raspberry, and all the other hooked enemies of the scrub tore at them unceasingly. When at last they gained the creek, and, plunging in thankfully, sat down on two boulders, they looked at each other and laughed.
“We’re a pretty pair of scarecrows,” said Robin. Barry chuckled.
“We are—if I look like you!”